9 Comments

1. Erica
   Jul 13, 2011 @ 08:51:04

   Reply

2. Jane
   Jul 13, 2011 @ 10:50:17

   @Erica Emailed you back Erica.

   Reply

3. Carla Dewhurst
   Sep 01, 2011 @ 10:03:18

   Dear “dear author,”

   Hello, I was wondering if you received my sample and request for advertising advice that I sent in last night. The book is “Ravenhook,”, available on Amazon Kindle.

   Thank you for your time, Carla Dewhurst

   Reply

4. Jane
   Sep 01, 2011 @ 10:05:14

   @Carla Dewhurst: Carla, I understand that you posted something that you asked us to remove, but I have not received any email from you.

   Reply

5. Carla Dewhurst
   Sep 01, 2011 @ 21:08:55

   Dear Jane, I don’t know where my message keeps going and I am not very computer savvy. Forgive my repeated messages, but I would like advice on marketing my book, “Ravenhook”, published on Amazon Kindle e-books.

   I also would be grateful if you would be interested in reviewing it. See sample below.

   Thank you for your patience, Carla Dewhurst

   Reply

6. Olivia
   Jan 14, 2012 @ 04:54:36

   Just giving you a heads up about another person behaving badly, but this time it’s a duo: an author and her agent behaving badly towards a reviewer named Wendy Darling. In all fairness, the author was the nicer of the two, but it’s a pretty sordid tale of a new author and her agent plotting together to deliberately vote positive reviews up in order to hide a specific negative review. And they did all of this plotting in plain view. On twitter.

   http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7149/6693431555_6c54b960b1_b.jpg

   Around this same time anonymous comments popped up on the reviewer’s blog that were incredibly insulting and mean:

   http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7145/6693486991_a0bc52d287_b.jpg

   I don’t know for certain, but some part of me believes that it’s either the author, the agent, or someone that they’d asked to vote up the reviews in order to hide this reviewer’s review.

   http://backinthemidnightgarden.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-selection.html#comment-form

   http://www.goodreads.com/review/show.html?id=231455953&page=6

   Now I know this reviewer and she’s one of the most professional and nicest reviewers I’ve had the pleasure of talking to on Goodreads.

   The author in question is The Selection by Kiera Cass and the agent is Elena Roth. Elena has her tweets protected but you can see them on Kiera’s account where all of these tweets are still posted. I did link you to a picture of the tweets just in case they suddenly come to the realization that they’re publicly talking about maneuvering votes to be more positive about the votes and indirectly asking people to bully the reviewer. (Or maybe directly. Some authors will ask for people to vote things up, knowing full well that the people will find the review and harass the person they’re talking about.)

   This is pretty appalling, mostly because it’s an agent who is acting so unprofessionally. The author is new, so she might not know better but the agent should. They have to get professional training, part of which presumably would or should involve mentioning how to respond to negativity in any format.

   Reply

7. jessica
   Jun 30, 2012 @ 10:41:24

   is there a fee for subscribing in ur blog?

   Reply

8. Jane
   Jun 30, 2012 @ 10:50:45

   @jessica – no there is no fee. You can see the feed address below in the socially yours column. You can also subscribe via email.

   Reply

9. Christina Martinez-Williams
   Jul 25, 2012 @ 21:40:14

   Hi!

   I am going to be a new teacher this fall teaching math to 14-19 year old adjudicated young men in Maryland and want to use literature (both fiction and non-fiction) as a way to connect my scholars with math concepts. I cannot build my new classroom library alone and need help from others. A colleague, who is also going to be a first year teacher, posted her Amazon wishlist on a parent’s forum after a parent urged her to do so. Less than a day after, strangers had purchased 55 books on her list.

   So, the reason why I was writing you (and I wasn’t sure if this or the email message link above was the best). is it seems that you might generate a good amount of traffic to your blog about literature and that you and the people who go to your blog generally value literacy and learning of literature. I would like to find a place where I could post my wishlist (http://amzn.com/w/ZU503G1R39OU)and see if others who have a passion for literature and providing resources for education would help me build both my math classroom library as well as a general library with books that my scholars will relate with and find relevant to their lives.

   I think books can be used to make math concepts more accessible through stories or explicit explanations, whether fiction or nonfiction. A lot of the books I have found connect math to real life with histories of math usage, connection of math to other discipines, and how we see math in nature and other aspects of life. I think in a lesson an excerpt from a book could be used to engage students, make math relevant, introduce particular concepts, and connect math to other disciplines and subjects.

   Let me know if your site might be a place I could do that or any suggestions you might have for me.

   I look forward to hearing back from you.

   Sincerely,
   Christina Martinez-Williams

   Reply